The Many Upheavels Of Evil Knievel.- (vehicles that uplift or crush us)-2 poems

The Many Upheavels Of Evel Knievel.

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Like an ungainly bird, just learning to fly,he would launch himself forward,in a dare-devilish try,his claws, spinning wheels, and his winged jumpsuits white,trimmed in bright reds and blues,like a flag in mid flightUp huge ramps to the lip of the sky he was flungwhile below breath was heldas his leap was begun.I would sit in an armchair, on the edge lurching up,trying to help make his landings, a bit less abrupt.Over Greyhounds and trucksover cars and through flame,he would sail like a god,with a demon-like name.Then he'd land with a crunch, tumbling end over end, bike goes this way, flesh that way,in ways bodies can't bend.Or he'd nail that back wheel, and then set the front down, with a fist in the air, as the crowd roared the sound,of their great love affair, with the man death ignored, all the jumps that I watched,left me anything but bored.I suppose if he'd grown old,he'd rig wheelchairs with jets,leaping nursing home buildings,in star spangled sweats,But now that he's in heaven,God has given him wings, where he'll spend his eternity, jumping high over things.

Summer Love.

In that summer

that wasn't anymore, in the mode of

her exit, front seat,right side for her,

but so wrong for me.She became a

passenger northbound,sad face bathed

in the August sun,the taste of

her petulant lips, still fresh on my own,she couldn't look at me, without tears welling up, in those lovely liquid eyes, so she sat chin up,and stared at the paradisewhere we'd spent

our summer love,as the taillights vanished down the long dirt road, she turned back once with a sad wave, a kiss blownand then she was gone.I never saw her again.Sometimes when I am lost in the vast extremes of lonely,I am back on